Saturday, July 3, 2010

six twenty six twenty ten: the first in a series

I've spent a lot of time in the past 3 1/2 years thinking about the morning Sophie was born. The process was intense, gratifying, and the 8 hour delivery was, in my mind, about as perfect as it could get. I was prepared, with my second birth experience, to have to digest the labor; meditate on it and its detail. I expected it to go fast - 3 to 4 hours - and was mentally prepared to deal with the chain of events that would take me to the hospital.

Call my mother in law to be here with Sophie
Call my mom to meet me at the hospital
breathe...
breathe...
breathe...

*****

At 2:30am, Saturday, June 26, I woke up angry. I had had a dream in which I went into labor and when I awoke with not a labor pain, not a sign in the world that I was going to have this baby 2 days after his due date, on the full moon in which I had been SURE was going to spawn his birth, I was upset. As a general rule, my hunches are wrong and I ignore them. But I had a hunch. Sophie was born on the full moon and I thought surely the full moon would once again bring on my baby's birth day. I was angry at myself for listening to this hunch.

Then, 30 minutes later, at 3am, I had a contraction and my water broke.

Elated, I went into the front room to look out the window and bask in the moon's glow and thank her for her power. I decided to wait until my second contraction to wake up Roy and, ten minutes later, I patted him on the shoulder and told him he needed to get up.

Two minutes later, I had another contraction.

One minute later, another.

After a few minutes of this, I panted "Call your mom" and Roy was on the phone, making the planned calls. After another few minutes when I was standing in the dining room, panting and clearly wanting/needing to push, we called our wonderful neighbor (who was also on standby) to come wait for Roy's mom.

We drove, Roy being exceedingly patient, to the hospital. This was at approximately 3:45am.

Roy ran into the ER and said, "My wife is in labor, I need a wheelchair" and the woman, who he said acted as though she hears this every day and was in no big hurry, came to my aid. She saw me, contracting and leaning against the brick wall and I said, "This baby is coming NOW". Her eyes widened and she ran back inside to get help.

We were escorted rapidly to labor and delivery, who had been notified of my arrival, and I found my way onto a table where I heard, "fully dilated, fully effaced, plus 3". The OB said, "you can push anytime" and with that - one hearty push - Miller James Cornett entered the world.

2 days after my due date.
1 hour and 8 minutes after my first contraction.
20 minutes after leaving the house.
8 minutes after entering the ER.
6 minutes after entering labor and delivery.


We are, to state the obvious, the understated, the words-cannot-describe emotion... we are so glad he's here.

4 comments:

beinmyOWNself said...

glad you made it to the ER! he's gorgeous, AM, absolutely gorgeous!

Jennifer Chappell Deckert said...

now that's the way to do it! nice work, he is beautiful!

Rachel said...

No WAY! What a story! I have been checking your blog somewhat obsessively, waiting to hear (and see!) the good news...what a lovely little one you've brought into this world! Love to you and yours...

kclblogs said...

oh my goodness, AM!!!!!! that's an amazing birth story. what efficiency. i wonder if this will be a personality trait of his.